


skin & bones

by BadOldWest



Category: Winternight Series - Katherine Arden
Genre: Conversation As Foreplay, F/M, First Time, I Have Only Read Book 1 Please Be Gentle, Light Bondage, Morozko Carved A Bed For Vasya Because Romance, Oral Sex, Smut, set during book 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:40:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22137958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/BadOldWest
Summary: “I am curious…”Her head tilted to the side. Not sure why all the sound had gone out of the room when she began speaking in this tone. She let the silence rest there, like the weight of her boot on a man’s throat, savoring.
Relationships: Morozko/Vasilisa Petrovna
Comments: 11
Kudos: 90





	skin & bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sapphiresunset](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphiresunset/gifts).



Without Dunya, Vasya was suddenly aware of things that were always said, and needed to be said, not because saying them made them done but made the process of doing them make sense. Vasya was nearly a woman: changing out of her wet clothes was a matter of common sense, she did not need to be chased around the house by a nurse like a child. But the element of the act, Dunya’s voice croaking to her about getting out of her cold, wet things, left an absence in the task that made her linger at the start every single time. 

Soaked to the bone, usually, her toes curling in as she hesitated. Vasya was sensible: but that does not mean she was immune to thinking things should be done a certain way. She had always readily stripped herself out of muddy clothes, ignoring the scoldings, but now that she was in the silent cabin she bit her lip and waited. 

“You should not be so offended that I should freeze you to death if you just stand there in my home, attempting to do the same.”

Vasya pulled her mind from the snowy woods she had seen around her, walls sealing her back into the cabin. He was near the fire, removing his own outer robe. Snow clung to it, though she doubted he’d feel the chill, maybe making the gesture for her to remove her dirty and wet riding apparel as well.

She plucked the shawl from her shoulders, allowing it to fall in a heap at her feet. It vanished to be laundered as it did after all of her rides. But unlike the clothed she carelessly tossed aside for Dunya to pick up, no one scolded her for her thoughtlessness. 

She was tired. While her body was recovering after his healing, after a rigorous day of riding she had been looking forward to a quiet nap, honestly hoping this vexing demon would not be in his cabin so she could snuggle up in private and not wake up just to feel disoriented by his unsettling calm. 

“Where were you, just then?” he whittled that flower without looking at her, “not merely out in the snow, I think.”

At the mere mention she wavered between winter wood and wooden walls. She had to hold herself steady to abate the dizziness of the two places this home was at once.

“You have distracted me from my thoughts,” she replied neatly, bending to remove her snowy boots. She cursed his presence because it was so close to the fire. To warm herself, she’d have to draw nearer. 

“What thoughts?”

“They are silly. I am tired.”

He held up his knife and his stem of wood in his hands as passively as the painting of a Saint’s upturned palms. 

“Do not let me keep you. Rest.”

She wrapped a hand around the post of his bed.

Absently, she examined the carvings there. He said his servants made this bed. But the carving on the posts did not seem like something he could not accomplish.

Then she chuckled.

“May I intrude on your silly thoughts long enough to ask why you laugh?”

She let her head fall back ruefully.

_ “‘Don’t let me keep you.’” _ she replied with a sharpened smile, “and yet here I am.”

Morozko blinked at her. 

She wound her hands around the bedpost, for a moment of levity allowing the impulse to shimmy up it like a tree branch to sprout before stomping the spark down. It was textured with carvings like rough bark, but lacquered smooth. 

“Do all of the maidens you bring here get a new bed?”

His knife paused in his careful work.

“This subject will not offend your modesty as it did last time?”

“I am curious…”

Her head tilted to the side. Not sure why all the sound had gone out of the room when she began speaking in this tone. She let the silence rest there, like the weight of her boot on a man’s throat, savoring. 

“If you replace them every time, where all the empty beds end up?”

He chuckled to himself, pulling the blade free from a very deep notch he had unintentionally made in the wood when his knife slipped a moment.

He gave no answer.

“As I’m sure there are...hundreds…”

His laugh deepened.

“Burned in the fire then, I assume, to warm the next one.”

She withdrew behind the bedpost slightly, her knee sinking onto the mattress and her body twisting behind for cover like it was a tree in the forest. 

He kept his wry expression trained on her face. As though she could not be so serious about this topic. She shouldn’t be. It was very odd for her to be.

“That was a long time ago. We have fresh firewood to keep you warm.”

Her stockings were wet from snow melting around her ankles and calves, trapped in the knit by her boots and let loose to flow to meet her skin by the growing warmth of her body.

She sat back to slide them down to her feet. Her skinny leg exposed in the dimming light like a single pale birch tree snaking towards the sky in a dark forest.

“And little else, to warm your bed,” he was looking at her oddly. Those pale blue eyes more curious for her than they had been since the start of her stay.

She tossed a balled-up, sodden stocking onto the floor with a  _ splat. _

Her bare legs crossed under the cover of her skirt. She sat back on the mattress. 

“When have I gone too far in my joking, so that I may not corrupt you?”

Vasya combed her fingers into her sweaty hair, stroking down the length of the braid and settling it over her shoulder. She kept silent but for her fidgeting.

“A girl who does not want to be in a convent and asks curiously about what it is that I do in my beds,” he set down his whittling, “cannot be too offended, I hope?”

Her hands settled in her lap. They were still damp from the snow in her hair and grew cold very quickly. She buried her skin in the fabric of her skirt.

“You sent them home with riches.”

“Is that what you want?”

“No.”

She narrowed her eyes at him and he actually went still. Surprised.

She blew out an irritated breath.

“You bribed their future husbands and their fathers for defiling them. The riches were not for those maidens. They were to please the men who speak for them.”

“There was a cost,” he stared at her grimly, seeming oddly uncomfortable with her confrontation, “should I have left them with nothing, so they would be sent to a convent?”

Vasya pursed her lips in thought.

“You could have chosen the road that had no consequences and left them alone.”

“I did not give them  _ nothing.” _

She startled, and he seemed to want to wind that sentence back into a ball of yarn and tuck it away. 

Vasya stared at him carefully.

“What was your gift, then?”

He took a moment that was almost like a breath. Like he had something to fear.

“May I show you?”

“No.”

He shrugged. Reached for his whittling. But Vasya stopped him with a look.

“I do not want to be spirited away like one of your maidens. I want to give myself willingly.”

“Then will you give yourself to me, so I may show you?”

She plucked the thong keeping her braid together off the end of her hair. She wove her fingers into the freed strands. Combing out from the bottom so the red-black mass of it was free. He watched the movements of her hands like she played a golden harp.

“Come here,” she said finally.

His eyes on her were quizzical: as though she continued to unspool a long thread of a joke and he had merely begun to slack on his end of it. 

She beckoned. Not sure what she wanted but very sure she wanted him to give it to her.

“Why a bed?”

He stood from his chair: something she never imagined him doing on her behalf. He was so immoveable. Her will had extended to him and moved him. That had already greatly altered how she had pictured lying with him. 

“Now you’re just being contrary. This location is hardly a trait singular to myself”

“You don’t need one to sleep. Why not a stable? If they are simply your mares.”

He moved towards her: if a joke, he seemed interested in playing along once again. 

“Wouldn’t you like to be comfortable? This is about feeling.”

“Hmm,” and with that, his cold hand cupped her cheek. She shivered. “Are you always...cold?”

Hot didn’t seem much better: remembering the burn of his healing. 

“Feeling,” he repeated, his icy thumb moving over her lip. “Whatever feels good. It’s like giving a gift. No person truly desires the same thing as the rest. You have to find it with them every single time.”

She opened her mouth to his exploring touch. Not meaning to. But she expected him to melt, her lips slicking with spit, in the ice against her skin. He was still solid under her lips. But she liked the shiver that drove drown her jaw, pulsing on her hot tongue.

“So if it pleases you,” he explained, his nose tracing the sharp jut of her cheekbone, “I will be cold.”

She could not keep the wonder out of her tone. She closed her eyes as that icy nose crept under the lobe of one ear. In his arms she still shivered. His solid chest was tight in her arms, as though his body would offer a reprieve from the icy teasing.

“Will you still show me?”

She hoped she had not lost her chance.

“If you want.”

Vasya nodded, and made to remove her dress. He stilled her hands. 

“Why a bed?”

She blinked at him, his body moving over hers as she crept back. It was menacing: but there was a finality in how he hovered before her.

“I don’t mean to breed you like a mare. I want to make it good for you.”

His lips caressed her cheek. She flushed like a bitter wind slammed against her skin: pink under his kisses with nerves and pleasure. 

“I carved these posts to keep you safe. To please you. To find what you like.”

“Hmm,” her thighs fell open and he fit his hips between them. She felt herself making room. Even parts of herself she hadn’t been aware of needing to alter themselves for this. Her cunt was flexing, responding to him, readying itself. 

She never felt ready for this kind of thing: but her body was so pleased by his cold kisses about her hot throat she was comforted to learn she would be prepared in the moment. Not by dreading it when it was not yet there..

This might have already happened to her. Her eyes fluttered open in shock. Her betrothed who had run away from her. She would not still be a virgin if he had stayed. She would have done this.

But not like this. 

This time, she would give herself.

“Bed...posts…?”

She opened her eyes to him. 

His face was very close to hers. 

“You carved them?”

He nodded after a moment of perfect stillness. Then, still nodding, he began to peel away his clothes. 

“Yes, Vasya.”

“To...do  _ what?” _

Perhaps to do no more than keep out a draft. His cold skin against her chest though, her opened dress, her underdress plastered to her skin with a seeping chill. She was clinging to the sense behind a situation that, unspooling in front of her, had no sense. 

One of her stockings was in his hand for a brief moment. Then it was a length of rope with just a stroke through his fingers. 

“I can show you,” he pressed his lips to hers. She breathed, and shivered, and shivered. Her whole body trembled but she was not afraid, “when I find how you like it first.”

She almost groaned, not knowing what exactly she had been denied. 

“When you would run wild through the woods,” he pulled back. She tried to chase. But his hand fanned across her sternum and pressed her gently back into the soft, snowy bed, “did you like to be a naughty child and defy orders? Or did you merely wish to feel safe there instead of home?”

Such a piercing question from some snuggling up to her body, making her feel like a kitten craving the heat of its mother’s belly.

When had he gotten warm?

“You do not mind the cold,” he cradled her jaw preciously in his hand, bowing to kiss her lips, “you are not afraid of it. But warmth, I think you like.”

He held off of her for a moment: so she must meet his eyes.

She nodded once. 

His body flared hotter against her. She sighed as he bowed back to continue their kiss. 

“Trust me and I will keep you warm and safe.”

She whimpered at that hot slide of his mouth down her throat. This felt like running impossible fast by just laying there. This felt like the daylight hours moving away from the house instead of the dreadful trudge towards it when she knew she was late and awaiting a scolding. This felt like moving deeper into the forest, where things made sense and learning was forced upon her.

“Don’t burn this bed,” she requested of him, “keep me warm yourself.”

He laughed, soft as a breath, before greedily pressing his lips to hers. This was less like his previous caresses: this felt like he was kissing her to take something from her body for himself. Nothing dark or wicked. But the previous had been smooth, and practiced, and doting as a nursemaid.

Now he drank from her mouth hungrily.

She squirmed out of the kiss, not from lack of enjoyment, but curiosity. 

“What do you get from this?”

Her wrists lifted above her head, pinned a large hand. His other one held the rope in front of her face.

“You will keep me warm and safe in your body, will you not?”

She nodded absently, distracted by the promise of the rope.

He held still for a while longer until her eyes flickered up to his face.

“You will give yourself willingly, as you said” he was waiting for a proper answer: “Will you do that now?”

Vasya let her head fall back onto the pillow.

“Yes,” she breathed, and his legs straddled her chest to bind her hands together, and then to a bedpost.

Once bound, he crawled back and pressed his groin between her legs. Something heavy and thick pressed into her core and she let out a sound of abandoned hope: only just tied down and not knowing what she had gotten herself into.

“You really let them all go home to their families after?”

He was stripping her bare, making quick and practiced work of her clothes like they were silly, needless things.

Again, Dunya’s cluck came to mind:

_ Get out of these cold, wet things. _

He hovered his face over her spread hips. Eyes flickered to hers, to her sex, like a dancing flame. 

“With the riches of a princess.”

He lowered his head to kiss her most private place, but her thighs jerked where they were held open by his hands. He halted immediately when she flinched.

She shook her head frantically. She did not want to be bought. She was given freely.

He softened at her apprehension. Brushing her loose hair out of her face with a tender, elegant hand.

“But you will let me go?”

He nodded. 

And she nodded back.

His head lowered down.

“What are you--?”

The first lick melted her. Her tied arms locked at the elbows and she yanked herself towards him: longing to hold on for purchase in that unruly black hair. 

A broken cry left her lips: both surrendering and victorious. As full of contradictions as the bed itself, a bed for a demon who did not sleep.

He shifted his shoulders like he was about to tuck in and steadily eat a meal from his plate, paying her struggle no mind. Each soft lick began to steal her away from the room. Her thighs twitched around his head. 

She was sure her heart was not in her chest, but every heavy beat was directly under his lips. She rocked into his mouth, gasping and not knowing what to plead for. She just knew when it came, in waves she didn’t understand, so divine and terrible she was sure this demon had stolen her breath with his mouth on her cunt. 

She was sweaty and limp, and accepting of the ropes around her arms that kept her sated body still. She wanted to be still. This bed was for her rest, after all, her breathing was fast and labored but her body was at rest.

He was kissing her face now, his lips wet with a smell familiar only at a distance. Now it was plunging into her mouth. 

She shuddered and took his tongue inside her mouth readily. She had not anticipated the act to be of so many messy pieces. 

His body moved through hers, a gentle roll of his hips as gentle as a mother’s arms cradling a baby. She should not be soothed and burned by one touch, and yet here she was, freezing until being burned again.

It took a few precious moments, her eyes clear and blinking at the canopy of snowy trees above her head, to realize he was not cutting through her. He had entered her slowly and gently, with the precision of a knife. She had seen the blood spots on her underclothes after some of her rougher rides through the woods. Though still chaste as a virgin, there was little physical evidence that would persuade a husband or her innocence. Dunya fretted about it more than once as she saw the stains with her tired eyes. 

Had Dunya intended to protect her from this?

Vasya was not afraid of what she had not yet lost. What had been lost without thinking because it never mattered. Of what she lost now. It was something she gained that meant more to her.

“Am I hurting you?” he bowed his head to her neck and kissed it tenderly, “how are you feeling?”

“Hmm,” she stretched out beneath him, flexing her tied arms in an act of reverence. Devotion had made fools of so many in her life. But she closed her eyes like a sleepy kitten in faith for his next thrust inside her. _ “Good.” _

He seemed pleased with her answer.

His warmth was a glow that radiated down her legs. Her cunt was full, taut at the inside like a belly stretched with rich food. This was the way in which she would recover in this cabin, it would seem. Tended to fully. 

“Is this  _ only _ for me?” she looked up at him. His mouth was slightly open, brow furrowed, as he rolled his hips slowly and gently to nestle himself in her each time.

“It has been...a long time,” he began to excuse, but she shook her head.

“No,  _ this, _ I want it to be for you too.”

She let her eyes close again as he lifted her knees and bore gently down, pressing her into the mattress. The soothing feeling of being filled, slick and needy, made her groan in his ear with satisfaction.

“What-do-you-like?” she hissed, struggling only to regain some control to see what might feel good for him as well.

“You please me greatly,” Morozko admitted with a whispered reverence. “I feel the same.”

Only then did she resist her bonds and attempt to claw at his shoulders. She jerked her wrists against the length of rope and whined when he shook his head, dipping a hand between them to touch her at the place he had buried himself inside. This made her fight harder: but not to be free. Just to thrash like a wild thing as he touched such a delicate place. 

“Oh,” she whispered, in complete understanding. 

There was an inexplicable pleasure in the midst of a white-out, during a blizzard, where the walls of snow erased every single thing in the world. The only thing that existed was the storm. The complete freedom of only being.

Tied, she could be as wild as she needed to be. 

Vasya indulged in that thought of harsh winter: a single life form in the crash of heavy snow. She could scream and the winds would howl over her, wave her limbs in all directions and be veiled from every eye that could see her. 

She only existed in that storm and herself.


End file.
